Trick Or Treat
by someblessedmonster
Summary: As Halloween nears, a murder in Santa Barbara links directly to Shawn and Gus, but even more directly to Shawn's past. Takes place in the middle of season 1, after "Shawn Vs. The Red Phantom."
1. A Nightmare on Elm Street

**LEGAL A/N:** _Psych_ and all characters belong to Steve Franks, Tagline Pictures, NBC Universal Television Studios, GEP Productions and USA Network.

**1: A Nightmare on Elm Street**

**Thursday, October 30, 1986**

Eleven-year-old Shawn Spencer was sprawled out on the hardwood floor of his Santa Barbara home. Lying on his stomach with his hands propped beneath his chin, he gazed up aimlessly at the living room television set in front of him, watching the images of _The Cosby Show_ progress on that humdrum Thursday night. Outside, the sun was just barely beginning to set as golden leaves fell from the oak trees outside onto the crisp lawn – another chore for Shawn to build his character doing.

In the midst of one of the pre-recorded laugh tracks, Henry Spencer's booming voice cut through the banter like an axe, "Shawn!"

The young boy pushed himself into a sitting position immediately as the ground shook beneath him, his father's approaching footsteps reverberating across the floor. Henry sounded as if he had cinder blocks for feet as he marched into the room wearing his black officer's uniform, his reddish-blonde hair swept to the side as his flashing eyes glowered down at his son. One hand held Shawn's nearly-empty backpack – he never came to school prepared – and the other gripped a black robe and plastic Darth Vader helmet.

It was the latter that angered him more.

"Shawn, what did I tell you about this?" Henry barked.

Wide-eyed, he stared up at his father with jaw agape until he received some strange, crazy notion to argue. "But, Dad, Halloween is _tomorrow_!"

"I don't care!" he answered sharply. "I told you that you're not going anywhere!"

"I was going to go with Gus and his dad," he pouted.

"It doesn't matter, Shawn. _I_ am your father and I told you – no trick-or-treating, no parties, and no candy."

"Dad, you don't understand!" Shawn cried out. His father turned to him with a moment of patience as Shawn explained desperately, "I have to sit there in class while all the other kids talk about what they're gonna do on Halloween and I'm the only one that can't go!"

Henry's tone became a bit darker as he looked outside of the living room window defensively. "Those other parents don't know how dangerous it is."

Shawn stared up at him in a wash of confusion and even more desperation as he tried to hold on to his favorite holiday. "Everybody's going! A bunch of people have asked me to trick-or-treating with them! What do I say—?"

"Tell them you're grounded!" Henry snapped. Shawn silenced himself immediately and stared up at his dad in shock, his eyes beginning to sting. Henry dropped the backpack on the living room floor and crumpled up the costume. "Enough whining. You've got homework to do."

Henry turned on his heel and marched back out of the room, coldness in every step. Defeated and heartbroken once again, Shawn turned away and stared down at the floor as his vision blurred.

**Saturday, October 28, 2006**

Gus sat on one end of his couch with a frown firmly planted on his face. With the cuffs on his light blue collared shirt undone, he hoped to relax for the evening inside of his apartment, but instead he was going to have to suffer through watching idiotic teenagers be laughably slaughtered by a masked buffoon. He glanced over with a deadened expression at Shawn, who had his Converse sneakers up on his coffee table again, and dug his hand in a bag of Cheetos.

"It's late, Shawn," Gus declared with frustration.

"So?" Shawn shrugged as he wiped his hand on the leg of his blue jeans, right beneath the edge of his blue t-shirt.

"So I'm not watching any more of Freddy," Gus tiredly protested.

"Freddy?" Shawn repeated in confusion. "What are you talking about, this is Jason. See the hockey mask?"

"The movie's stupid, Shawn!" he said, rolling his eyes.

"Of course it's stupid," Shawn replied and scooped another handful of Cheetos into his mouth. "They're all stupid. That's the point. And this is _Friday the 13th, Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan_. They just spent an hour and a half on a cruise ship. He hasn't even _taken_ Manhattan yet—"  
"And he'll have to do it without me," Gus explained, "because I want to sleep. Now."

"What?" Shawn laughed. "Dude, are you scared? Don't tell me this is a repeat of the time we watched _Candyman_ together."

"I'm _not_ scared," Gus defensively declared. "And don't you have a party or something to go to?"

"A Halloween party?" He scoffed and turned back to the TV. "Please, I'm not ten."

"Oh, that's right," Gus remembered. "You, the guy who parties for every holiday including Flag Day, won't go to a Halloween party."

"Gus," Shawn said softly, staring at him with a serious expression. "You know I'm only comfortable dressing up around you." Gus rolled his eyes and looked away as Shawn gazed at the screen as yet another teenager was being stalked by the machete-wielding psychopath. "Halloween's for children and candy corporations anyway."  
He crunched on another mouthful of Cheetos and mumbled through the crunching, "M-Hey, do-you -ave any peanu-buttr to go wit- dees?"

Gus gazed at him with a disgusted expression as he translated the request. The ringing of his cell phone interrupted his gag as Gus reached into the pocket of his slacks. "Hold that thought and keep it to yourself." He answered the cell phone, placing it to his ear, "Burton Guster."

Shawn could hear faint, high-pitched mumbles coming from the earpiece as a look of surprise came across Gus' face. "Juliet?" Gus declared, confused.  
Shawn glared at Gus jealously. "She has _your_ phone number?"

Gus put up a hand in Shawn's face as he glanced over at the clock. "Now?" he asked. After a few more mumbles and Shawn trying to listen in on the call, Gus finally responded. "Oh-okay, we'll be there right away." He hung up the cell phone and looked at Shawn who had a bitter frown on his face.  
"It's for _business_ purposes," Gus answered.

Shawn stared at him in still silence, then lifted his Cheeto-covered hand and wiped it on Gus' suede couch cushion. Gus glanced down at the trail of Cheeto-salt, then looked up at Shawn angrily. "We've got a case," Gus said through gritted teeth. "Let's go."

Gus began to wipe off the salt as he came to a stand. Shawn sat on the couch, still mulling over his jealousy. "Do you have _her_ number?" Shawn asked, staring at him with narrow eyes. Gus gazed down at him with an impishly blank expression which could not be construed as 'yes' or 'no,' then turned around and walked out of the living room. Shawn watched him go even more bitterly and exacted vengeance by wiping his other hand on the couch.

* * *

Juliet O'Hara stood in the kitchen of 1428 Elm Street and gazed at the beefy man lying face down on his linoleum floor. A dozen police officers moved around her, snapping photographs and taking notes on the scene. Her stomach slowly churned as she gazed at the bluish complexion of the man's face. Her daze was broken by the cheerful sound of Shawn's voice as he and Gus marched into the kitchen from the side door.

"Fear not, sweet Juliet," he announced, "Psych-Man is here." From the moment Shawn's eyes hit the ground and viewed the body, he was already absorbing information. He glanced up at the table near the body and noticed a bowl of candy corn. Right next to it sat a full glass of water. He stared back down at the bluish face of the victim.

He sharply inhaled, closing his eyes and placing the tips of his fingers to his temples. Rubbing his temples, he received "visions from beyond" which were anything but. Gus gazed down at the victim with a heavy frown full of pity. "Who was he?" Gus asked.

"George Romero," she responded. "Late 50s. Owned a sporting goods store a few miles from here. So far, we believe he was alone all night and—"

"You think he choked," Shawn cut in, ending his continuous, monotone hum. Juliet nodded in agreement, placing her hands in front of her. Shawn glanced around at the dozens of officers and added, "But the spirits are telling me otherwise. This was no accident."

"Then what do the spirits think it was?" Interim Chief Carlton Lassiter asked as he strolled into the kitchen from the living room. Shawn glanced passed Lassiter and spotted a television set that was still on. It was some old, black-and-white B-movie currently showing a sleeping damsel-in-distress-type woman who was about to become a victim to the snakes which were slithering up her bed.

Shawn immediately explained, "You see, I'm trying to hear them more clearly, but it seems that there's a doubtful presence in the room that's making it more difficult." Shawn left the kitchen, Gus, Juliet and Lassiter following and moved into the living room, taking in the setting and searching for more clues. He stopped near the hallway which led to the rest of the house and turned back towards the others. "I'm still sensing the presence. I think _Interim Chief_ Lassiter is giving off some sort of anti-spirit musk."

"That's strange," Juliet declared. "He's the one who requested I call."

Gus and Shawn both stared at her, bewildered. "Come again?" said Gus.

"Do mine ears deceive me?" Shawn asked with a swaggering smile. "Detective Lassiter, are you finally done doubting my gift?" Lassiter flashed him a disgusted glare as he marched towards Shawn menacingly. He couldn't contain the slightly-girlish squeak. "Don't hit me!"

Shawn leapt out of the way as Lassiter moved into the hallway. He grabbed the doorknob of the first door on the left. "I'm starting to doubt your _innocence_," Lassiter explained, pushing the door open to reveal George Romero's bedroom.

Shawn and Gus leaned in to view the room and a message scrawled out in black permanent ink on the far wall: 'TRICK OR TREAT, SPENCER?'


	2. Candyman

**LEGAL A/N:**_Psych_ and all characters belong to Steve Franks, Tagline Pictures, NBC Universal Television Studios, GEP Productions and USA Network.

**2: Candyman**

"This is bad, Shawn," Gus bitterly declared. He and Shawn sat side-by-side in Karen Vick's former office, now temporarily used by Lassiter. Shawn and Gus were alone with bitter faces, just a few hours after discovering the body and the message directed at them. Nervous sweat was beginning to form around Gus' neck. "I mean, what if they think we're behind this?"

Shawn sat and stared straight ahead with a calm, yet thoughtful expression. "We're not suspects in the murder," he coolly stated.

Gus flashed him a look. "How do _you_ know?"

"Lassiter doesn't think I'm dumb enough to kill someone then write myself a memo for the police to find," Shawn answered. "Or at least he doesn't think I killed that guy. _He's_ not that dumb." He reached over and picked up the clear glass paperweight sphere off of the desk, rolling the orb back and forth in his palms. "We're here because Lassiter thinks I'm some sort of mastermind since he _definitely_ doesn't believe I'm psychic. He's trying to figure out how I knew about the dead body, wrote the message on the wall, then left no evidence that I was there and made it look like the real killer is somehow calling me out."

"He _is_ calling you out," Shawn snapped, not as composed about the situation as Shawn by far. "'Trick or treat, Spencer?'"

"My last name is Spencer. There are plenty of other people with that name." He counted on his fingers. "Spencer Tracy, Luke and Laura… wasn't there a Spencer somewhere in that zombie game?"

"_Resident Evil_," Gus nodded affirmatively. Suddenly realizing he'd been sidetracked, he shook his head in frustration. "That's beside the point, Shawn."

"Would you quit freaking out?" Shawn lightly chuckled as he glanced over at Gus. "Look, I'll tell you right now, the other thing Lassiter wants is to break us down and discredit me right here and that's not gonna happen."

"I don't care whether you want to accept this or not," Gus seriously declared. "We're involved in this. Directly this time. Have you thought about the fact that he could've been killed _because_ of us?"

Shawn turned away, shaking his head. "That's a stretch."

"Well, then let's agree to disagree and solve this," Gus declared. "So we know he didn't choke?"

"Without a doubt," Shawn nodded. "Not far from the body there was a glass of water – full and untouched."

"So?"

"So? What do you do when you start choking besides act embarrassed? If there's a glass of water, you start trying to drink."

"The coroner said that the trauma done to the esophagus looks like he choked on the candy corn."

"Gus," Shawn blinked, staring at his friend with pity. "Please. He was at _least_ 250 pounds. How ridiculous is it for a grown man of that size to choke on candy corn?" Shawn's hazel eyes glanced over at the window, catching a reflection of the office behind him. The angry, machine-like movements of Detective Lassiter were unmistakable as his silhouette moved towards the office from behind.

"So how did he die?" Gus asked.

Shawn glanced over at him. "I thought you'd never ask."

The second that the door to the office opened Shawn bellowed with agony, another absurd vision racking his head. "AAAHHhhhh! Ooowwww!" Lassiter paused in the doorway, rolling his eyes with disgust and frustration. Shawn could be heard throughout the entire police station as people, even those in handcuffs, stopped and watched 'that guy' do 'that thing.' Shawn began to roar like a lion as he rolled his head around his shoulders.

Gus glanced back at Lassiter, hiding his embarrassment with a bemused shrug. Juliet appeared at Lassiter's side in a few seconds, anxious to know what Shawn saw. Lassiter stared down at the ground stubbornly, still standing in the doorway as Shawn's lion roars turned into the squawking of a crow.

"All right!" Lassiter snapped, coming unhinged. "What is it?!?"

Shawn silenced himself, still sitting with his back to Lassiter as a smirk of victory and mischief formed his face. His face regained its seriousness as he came to a stand and whirled around towards the detectives. He closed his eyes and held his temples. "I'm seeing… a field…"

"Another body?" Juliet interrupted.

"Shh, girl, wait for it," Gus told her. Juliet nodded and was patient again.

"No, there… are birds… black birds… Flapping around…" Shawn began to gracefully flap his arms in an _Angels in the Outfield_-type portrayal. "Caawww," he sounded out, like a crow. "Caawww…"

"_How_ is this relevant?" Lassiter sighed.

"I was right," Shawn whispered, his eyes squeezed shut as he continued to flap his arms. "He was murdered."

"CSI reports that he died of asphyxiation," Lassiter snapped.

"Yeah, well, _CSI_ isn't the highest-rated show on TV anymore," Shawn blurted calmly, still flapping his arms and rocking back and forth smoothly.

Juliet said to Lassiter informatively. "That would explain why there wasn't any food lodged in the throat of the body."

"What?" Gus chuckled. "Did you guys think that he swallowed it after he died?" He let out a laugh as they turned and flashed him an unappreciative look.

"Then how do you explain the trauma to the throat, Miss Cleo?" Lassiter asked crossly.

"Ooh," Shawn grimaced as he remained in his flapping trance. "Why don't you go carbon date that joke, because I see a field of flowing stalks… There's Mel Gibson and M. Night Shyamalan! Flowing stalks of corn… A field of corn! The candy! It's the candy corn!"

Shawn opened his eyes with revelation as he stared at Juliet and Lassiter ominously, stretching his arms out. He whispered intensely, "The candy was _poisoned_." Juliet and Lassiter looked at each other worriedly.

Gus leaned in closer and whispered, "Candy corn isn't made of actual corn—" Shawn smacked him on the shoulder with one of his outstretched hands, silencing him.


	3. Don't Look Now

**LEGAL A/N:** _Psych_ and all characters belong to Steve Franks, Tagline Pictures, NBC Universal Television Studios, GEP Productions and USA Network.

**3: Don't Look Now**

**  
Sunday, October 29, 2006**

Gus strolled down the boardwalk the next morning with Shawn at his side as his friend ate his way through one of his favorite dishes, a box of Lo Mien. "I can't believe this weekend is over," Gus sighed. He glanced to the side as two rich-looking, attractive young women walked down carrying shopping bags from the season Halloween store, both of them excited about their selections.

"I wonder what they're gonna do with costumes now?" Shawn said as he watched them pass by. "Think they have kids or something?"

"No," Gus said bitterly. "I bet they're going to the Montecito Halloween Mash – it's the biggest thing in Santa Barbara. Oprah was there last year. I hear she was the Queen of Hearts."

Shawn glanced over at Gus as they continued to walk down the sidewalk. "Why so glum?"

"Everybody who's anybody gets in to that party," Gus grumbled. "It's hosted by that movie and TV producer – Cristina Kubrick."

Shawn's expression contorted. "Didn't she try to make _Freddy vs. Jason vs. The Breakfast Club_?"

"Yep," Gus grinned. "The biggest handicap match of all time. And the only reason it didn't work out was that Anthony Michael Hall had schedule conflicts."

"How the hell does she get people to watch this stuff?"

He shrugged. "Don't know. People will watch anything on TV these days." Gus reached into his back pocket, pulled out a neatly folded piece of paper, and began to unfold it. "And here we are, party-less and trying to figure out how you're related to the victim."

"I don't think I am," Shawn shrugged in denial.

"Just listen, all right? Now the victim, George Romero, had a few jobs before he opened up the sporting goods store. This was all I could find on him. He was a security guard for a while for a bank, then before that he worked in a convenience store. Shawn, look at this list and tell me if anything pops out."

Shawn rolled his eyes and glanced over at the list, skimming through the names. "Nothing," he shrugged. "Dude, I don't see it and I don't think I'm going to. We didn't know each other."

"Then what about the message?" Gus asked.

Shawn mused to himself as finished his box of noodles and threw it in a garbage can. "Maybe…" he began, "maybe the connection isn't to me. Or even to another Spencer. It's to him." Shawn looked over at Gus who had a confused expression.

They came to a crosswalk and crossed the street as Gus declared, "Who'd want to kill Romero the sporting goods store owner?" Both of them strolled up to the front office of Psych to see Juliet O'Hara standing in front of the door with her arms crossed. She turned around and faced them, a look of distress darkening her expression.

"There's been another murder," she declared. Shawn and Gus paused, bewildered. She looked straight at Shawn and said, shaking her head with guilt, "You were right. We ran the candy through the lab and… nothing's definite but there was definitely something else in it. It doesn't match any poisons in our lab, but the results aren't finalized yet." She sighed, glancing down, then looked up, "We should've taken your word for it right away."

"Look, don't worry," Shawn answered sympathetically as he glanced over at Gus briefly, then back to Juliet. "We'll find out why this is happening."

"Let's not waste any more time," Juliet agreed. "Come on. We're going to the station."

* * *

Shawn and Gus sat at Juliet's desk in the police station as Juliet handed Shawn a file. She glanced around making sure Lassiter wasn't in sight. "Now technically," she explained, "I don't have the authority to tell you any details of the case."

Shawn opened the file and stared down at the photographs of a man with a tattered bathrobe and grey hair with his face lying down on a kitchen linoleum floor. "But that doesn't mean you can't stumble upon these crime scene photos and maybe get a feeling from some visual details?"

"I might," Shawn said, deep in thought as he stared down at the photos. Gus leaned over Shawn's shoulder and studied the pictures, too. Juliet's phone began to ring on her desk and she picked up the receiver.

"O'Hara," she answered. After a few moments, she answered, "Sure. I'll be right over." She hung up the phone saying, "I'll be right back – she's here." Juliet rushed off leaving Shawn and Gus with the photos.

"Are you getting anything?" Gus asked while they were alone.

"Yeah," Shawn nodded. "This man was in desperate need of a trip to Bed, Bath and Beyond."

"Are there any pictures of his face?"

"I don't know." Shawn glanced down at the kitchen seeing a pumpkin pie on the counter, only a piece missing. "Bingo," he announced. "If this is related, then this is what killed him." Shawn flipped to the next photograph in succession: a photograph of the same message, 'Trick or Treat, Spencer?' written on the living room wall.

"Wait a minute," Shawn noticed. "The TV is on." He struggled and strained his eyes to make out the tiny, black-and-white image on the screen.

"So?"

"So… it was on in Romero's house, too."

"What are you saying?" Gus shrugged. "That Samara Morgan is saving time by climbing out of TVs and poisoning food?"

Shawn gazed intently at the picture with a contemplative expression. "They were both in the kitchen. What are the odds that both the TVs were on in separate rooms – in the same room?"

The sound of footsteps got their attentions as Shawn and Gus glanced up to see Juliet and another woman marching up to the desk. Gus' eyes widened and he swallowed hard, staring blankly at the other blonde woman in her late twenties wearing a black, pinstripe business suit that looked like Rodeo Drive material. A gold police badge hung down on a chain around her neck. That woman knew how to dress. Her blue eyes met with Gus' brown eyes and Gus was rendered motionless.

Shawn put down the pictures before they could be seen by the woman and threw himself into a vision. He came to an abrupt stand and cried out in pain. "Ooohh!" he shouted. "Ahhh!"

"Did you get something?" Juliet asked.

"Yes…" Shawn breathed with his eyes squeezed shut. "There's… a connection… in the television."

"In the television?" Juliet declared, bewildered.

"Yes, yes," Shawn answered, "it's a clue."

The attractive woman gazed at Shawn with a confused, yet intrigued expression. "Hmm. Interesting."

"Shawn, Gus," Juliet began, "I'd like to introduce you to Jessica King, forensic psychologist for the Santa Barbara PD."

"Shawn Spencer," he said, extending his hand.

Gus stepped in front of his friend and offered his own. "And I'm Burton Guster." With a wide smile, he stared at Jessica charmingly, receiving an equal grin. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

"The pleasure's the same," Jessica declared, trying to contain her enamored state.

Shawn leaned in, whispering behind Gus, "Quit drooling." Gus jerked his arm back, elbowing Shawn in the stomach as he reached back into his pocket. Shawn grimaced with pain and backed away as Gus pulled out a business card.

"We look forward to working with you on this case," Gus smoothly responded, handing her the card.

Juliet and Shawn stared at Gus and Jessica awkwardly, as Juliet began, "Uh… well, it seems that we're dealing with a serial killer and… Jessica will help us… get into the mindset of the killer."

Shawn glanced over at the badge hanging around Jessica's neck as something suddenly occurred to him. He remembered vividly every last listing on Romero's resume. He looked down at the crime scene photos on Juliet's desk and saw a photo containing the face of the victim. His heart sank as he gazed with a bewildered expression.

"Sean Cunningham," Shawn whispered aloud. Gus, Juliet and Jessica looked over at him, amazed.

"The victim's name," Juliet declared. "How did you—?"

He looked up at them with a slightly horrified expression. "This isn't about me," Shawn explained. "It's about my dad."


	4. The Ring

**LEGAL A/N:** _Psych_ and all characters belong to Steve Franks, Tagline Pictures, NBC Universal Television Studios, GEP Productions and USA Network.

**4. The Ring**

Henry Spencer wiped the sweat from his brow, his suede leather work gloves rubbing his face. He was standing in the middle of his side yard, raking the endless oak leaves spread out over the lawn. He glanced out beneath the rim of his black baseball cap to the pinkish sky above, seeing the sun beginning to sink behind the clouds. With a grumble, he went back to raking, knowing that he was losing the light of day.

Henry turned around and paused, slightly stunned, but unimpressed. His son stood with his hands dug into the pockets of his jeans with a cold expression on his face. Henry looked away from Shawn and minded his yard work. "Didn't expect to see you here," he unenthusiastically declared to Shawn. "What did you do this time?"

Shawn, less than amused and unprepared for his dad's cold brand of parenting, said in a strikingly serious tone, "George Romero and Sean Cunningham are dead." Henry rested momentarily again, staring down at the grass beneath his feet. With a slightly more apologetic and sympathetic tone, Shawn added, "Somebody… murdered them in their homes last night."

His father was quiet for several more seconds and as motionless as a stone. Shawn stared at his dad's back, waiting for some sort of emotional response which would never come. Henry gripped the wooden handle of the rake tighter and continued to brush the lawn clean of the leaves. Shawn, utterly confused, added, "There was a message found written on the wall of both of their homes. 'Trick or Treat, Spencer.'"

Henry gave no response. He tromped through the grass to a box of black garbage bags, ripping one from its roll.

"Did you hear what I said?" Shawn asked.

"I heard you," Henry responded with the perfect amount of indifference and lack of concern.

Shawn felt a bitter spike jab through his insides. He gritted his teeth as he glanced about the yard. "What is wrong with you?" Shawn blurted. Henry stopped and turned towards his son. "I just told you that two of your partners were _murdered_. _You're_ the only thing that connects them! And you don't even care?"

"There are a lot of sick people out there, Shawn," Henry snapped. "You need to wake up to that fact of life."

"That's it?" Shawn said with bewilderment and anger. "'The facts of life?' Is that all it is to you?" He shook his head at his father with resentment. With a sigh, Henry ignored Shawn and opened the garbage bag. "You knew these men. Somebody poisons them and all you can say is 'that's the way life is?'"

At a single word in Shawn's last sentence, Henry showed the slightest pause. For a brief second, his face was stricken with contemplation, then realization. It was a fraction of a moment, but that's all the Shawn needed to recognize. Henry quickly turned away from Shawn, but it was too late. His son knew that his father was keeping something from him.

"Why don't you do yourself and the police department a favor, kid," Henry spitefully declared. "Why don't you stop worrying about this and go back to playing psychic for your buddies?"

Shawn glared at his dad's back with a burning passion fueled with misery. He wanted to knock his own father out – and it wasn't the first time in his life.

Henry turned back towards Shawn with a challenging expression. "Now if you don't mind, I'm pretty sure you have nothing else of value left to say." Shawn and Henry glared at each other threateningly, each of them waiting for a display of weakness. Shawn was the first to cave – just like always. He turned away and stomped off furiously, leaving his father behind.

Henry watched him leave in silence, and then turned back towards the setting sun. A look of worry came across his face as a cold autumn wind arched through the yard, and he gripped the plastic bag tightly.

* * *

"This is a bad idea, Shawn," Gus grumbled with strong protest. "This is still a crime scene!" Both Gus and Shawn were covered in a thick blanket of darkness as they stood outside of Sean Cunningham's house at the back door. Shawn skillfully attempted to slide Gus' credit card in between the door and frame.

"Keep your voice down," Shawn whispered as he glanced back at Gus in the moonless night. "Open your cell phone and give me some light." Frustrated, Gus pulled out his phone, opening it and shining the blue light on the lock of the door. A few moments later, the door twisted free. "Got it!" Shawn proclaimed.

"Why are we whispering?" Gus asked. "Cunningham lived alone."

"Because we're entering a house that doesn't belong to us at night. It's what you do."

"Hey," Gus complained. "_I_ didn't want to come in here. You were the one that dragged me out of my comfortable bed."

Shawn and Gus entered the darkened, empty house silently. "Quit being a baby," Shawn snapped quietly, handing Gus back his card. Shawn glanced around the kitchen and living room, side-by-side. The thick, black, scribbled words were still visible on the white wall through the shadows: 'Trick or Treat, Spencer?'

He looked in the corner and spotted Cunningham's modest television set, a VCR sitting on top of it. "There!" Shawn pointed.

"What is this about?" Gus asked again. "Why are we here?"

"My dad knows something about what's going on," Shawn answered. "I could tell he was trying to hide it from me."

"Hide what?"

"I don't know yet. But there's a reason he told me to get off this case." He walked over to the television set and turned the VCR on.

"Maybe you should listen to him," Gus suggested.

"Why would I start doing that?" Shawn asked with a hint of bitterness.

"This is different, and you know it," Gus explained. "Your dad was a cop for years and if _he_ thinks we're in too deep then I think we—"

Shawn cut him off with an icy tone, "I didn't ask what either of you thought."

Gus stopped in his tracks, taken aback. Shawn never talked to him like that. He crossed his arms as Shawn turned around back towards the VCR. "I'm just saying," Gus begrudgingly defended.

Shawn pressed the eject button, the VCR releasing a seemingly blank video tape. "Just what I thought," Shawn nodded. He shoved the tape back in the VCR and turned on the television set, pressing play. A black-and-white picture appeared on the screen of a hysterical woman running down the aisle of a passenger train, covered in vicious cobra snakes. "There's a tape like this in Romero's house – I checked."

"What is it?" Gus curiously asked, staring at the movie as it played out.

"It's some B-movie from the 50s," Shawn explained. "_'Attack of the Killer Snakes on a Runaway Train_.'"

The screen cut to a Caucasian man holding a revolver, wearing a fedora and suit standing next to a beautiful, terrified woman in a black dress on another section of the speeding train. In a distinct, masculine voice, he proclaimed, "That's it, Betty. I've had it with these snakes on this train!"

Shawn turned to Gus and explained, "What are the odds of two men who were murdered the exact same way by assumingly the same person having the same, crappy movie playing while they were discovered?" Gus stared at Shawn and turned back to the VCR as the newest clue baffled his mind as well.

**Tuesday, October 28, 1986**

"You cheated!" eleven-year-old Gus whined. He stood in the middle of Archie's Arcade, located conveniently between his favorite pizza shop and Granada Theater, with his best friend Shawn. The two of them were standing in front of a _Sky Kid_ video arcade booth – Shawn carrying a sly, victorious expression while Gus pouted with disgust. Both children shouted over the noise inside the arcade of ringing bells, buzzing sounds, shooting lasers, and Europe's "The Final Countdown."

"Hey, you're just being a sore loser," Shawn shrugged with a grin. "Wanna go again and see if you can beat me this time?"

"Again?" Gus exclaimed. "That was my last quarter! I've got nothing!"

"Let's go get some more money, then," Shawn declared with excitement; he was on a roll. "Can't you ask your mom or something?"

"Uh, Shawn…"

"C'mon! Don't chicken out now! Look around for a quarter."

"Shawn, _you'd_ better look around," Gus said with trepidation, his eyes wide as they stared over Shawn's shoulder. "I think your dad just walked in here!"

The young troublemaker's heart skipped a beat as he spun around, making eye contact with Henry the Enforcer. "Oh, no," Shawn said, letting out a small whisper as his father marched across the arcade straight to him, like an eagle zeroing in on its prey.

"Shawn!" Henry snapped.

"Dad, I can explain—"

"Be quiet!" he ordered, and if Shawn could stop the beating of his heart he would. Henry glared at Shawn with fury. "I told you to come straight home after school!" With a cold stare, he turned to Gus, "And you shouldn't be out here either! Do your parents know you're here?"

Gus' eyes slammed to the floor immediately with shame. "N-No, sir."

"Come on, both of you," Henry ordered. He took Shawn by the shoulder and led him out of the arcade as he would escort a prisoner to his cell.

As soon as the doors opened to the street outside, Shawn was hit with a gust of cold wind and dead leaves in the air. The three of them stopped momentarily at the curb as Shawn spotted a flier whipping by in the wind. It fell to the ground and was dragged across it by the gust just long enough for Shawn to read the colorful text drawn in marker, advertising the Santa Barbara Monster Mash.

Not long after, Henry pulled Shawn into the house, holding his son by the arm. They entered the living room to find it a mess, with newspapers all over the floor, coffee table, and couch, and the television set turned on to the local Santa Barbara news station. Everything seemed out of place and unkempt, and for the first time Shawn realized it had been that way for a few weeks. It was just something that never really occurred to him before.

Shawn had said anything to his father since the drive to Gus' house and the following trip home. However, now a thousand things Shawn wanted to say – half of which he'd be grounded for weeks for – were running through his mind. It was only a question of which would get him into more trouble.

"Dad," Shawn began with a bitter tone. "What's your problem?"

Henry froze in mid-step. Shawn decided that one probably wasn't the best first question to ask. "What's _my_ problem?" Henry snapped. "I gave you an order and you disobeyed me. That sounds more like _your_ problem."

"What do you have against Halloween?" Shawn asked. "You never were like this before."

"I don't want to hear anymore of it."

His son yanked himself out of his father's grip and stood, facing off with the tower man, staring him straight in the eyes. "You just don't want me to have a life!" Shawn protested bravely. "You want me to do nothing but go to school, be a cop, and turn out to be a big jerk like you!"

Henry stared motionlessly down at his son for what felt like hours. It was the silence that killed Shawn the most. If Henry was going to ground him or kill him or whatever, Shawn wished his father would hurry up and get it over with because the suspense was killing him. But his father said nothing. He just stared at him with coldness brewing in his eyes for more than enough time to make Shawn regret he'd said anything at all.

Finally Henry moved. He turned Shawn around, forcefully, but not violently, and moved his son into his room. Shawn glanced down at a newspaper headline shouting up at him from the floor, before he was relocated to his cell. Shawn stood in the middle of the room and looked back at Henry before he slammed the door, locking Shawn inside without a word.

It was the silence that killed him the most.

**Monday, October 30, 2006**

His shoulder jerked and Shawn's eyes popped open revealing the dark ceiling of his bedroom. Thirty-one-year-old Shawn Spencer shot up from his bed, sitting up with an alarmed demeanor. It was strange that he had such a vivid dream of a twenty-year-old occurrence, remembering every detail. It wasn't so strange that every detail was reviewed with bitterness and rage.

Shawn balled up his fists and pushed them into his forehead as his fury towards his father churned his stomach, sickening him. The nausea was just a side-effect of a darkness in his heart which he had held on to for a long time, one that he wished he could deny and make vanish along with the decades of bad memories that went along with it.

He looked over at the clock to find it was near 3:00am. Sleepless nights. Now he really _was_ his dad.

The nausea all of a sudden became worse after that thought. He pushed himself out of bed and came to a stand, headed for the medicine cabinet, but froze in his steps in the middle of the room. They say in dreams, when you read something, then read it again, the message changes every time. This one didn't change. It was a clear snapshot of October 28, 1986. The headline on the newspaper which Shawn glanced at before his father locked him inside of his room for the night read 'COBRA KILLER POISONS SUMMERLAND CHILD.'

The epiphany struck him like lightning: history was coming full circle.


	5. Ju on: The Grudge

**LEGAL A/N:** _Psych_ and all characters belong to Steve Franks, Tagline Pictures, NBC Universal Television Studios, GEP Productions and USA Network.

**5. Ju-on: The Grudge**

**  
Monday, October 30, 2006**

The next morning, Gus calmly walked through the glass double doors of the Santa Barbara Police Station, holding the door for a couple of uniformed officers exiting the building. As he took his hand away from the door and turned towards the rest of the building, he caught a glimpse of Jessica King walking into the hallway, staring down at a folded up newspaper.

A wide grin stretched his face as he adjusted his collar and straightened the lapels of his blazer. Smoothly, he strolled over to Jessica and casually remarked, "Good morning, Ms. King."

Jessica stopped in the hallway and glanced up at Gus with a bright smile, recognizing his voice instantly. "Gus!" she beamed as the two of them converged in the middle of the station entrance. Her smile turned into a slightly pained grimace. "Please," she said, "don't call me Ms. King. It makes me feel like I'm a mother or something. Jessica will do for me."

"A lovely name like that doesn't simply 'do,'" Gus charmingly declared. He turned on charm that had gotten him through high school and college and continued to bring him successful business deals. "In fact, the name 'Jessica' is one of my favorites. It has such a dignified tone about it." He flashed her another smooth grin to which Jessica could only blush at.

Gus glanced down at her newspaper, observing the details – about one of the only useful things _Gus_ ever learned from _Shawn_. "Ah," Gus noted, "you're reading the entertainment section…"

"Oh, yeah," Jessica shrugged with a smile. "I'm reading a review for the Santa Barbara Symphony."

"Are you a fan of the symphony?" Gus asked with astonishment.

"Absolutely," Jessica declared. "One of my close friends is actually the lead violist."

"_Really_?" Gus grinned with excitement. "I saw _Bolero_ last spring. It was spectacular—"

"Gus?" Juliet interrupted from the sidelines. Jessica and Gus turned quickly to see Juliet walking towards them with a confused look on her face. "Do you know what's going on with Shawn?"

"What do you mean?" Gus asked. "I just got a text message saying to meet me down here."

Juliet said with astonishment, "He's been here for an hour. I think he just might have solved the case." Gus and Jessica glanced at each other, baffled, as they followed Juliet down the hallway.

* * *

Shawn sat in the Interim Chief's office holding a baby rattle in his hands with his eyes squeezed shut, Lassiter sitting across from him with a pained expression. Shawn shook the rattle incessantly as Lassiter clutched his aching head, having heard the sound constantly for twenty minutes.

Juliet walked through the door with Gus and Jessica in tow as they watched the ridiculous scene. Jessica glanced over at Gus with a 'what is he doing' expression.

"Uh," Gus struggled to explain, not sure himself, "he must be… receiving some sort of message from the ghost of a child."

With a breathy, flowing tone, Shawn said to his audience over the sound of the rattle, "There's… been another murder…"

"What?" Juliet proclaimed. "We haven't heard anything—"

"And you won't," Shawn answered. "The murder was in Burbank yesterday. The victim's name… Johnathan Carpenter… Formerly with the Santa Barbara PD…"

Gus, Jessica and Juliet glanced at each other. Even Lassiter, through his pain, found the revelation intriguing. "Carpenter," Juliet repeated, contemplating the name. "He was another one of Henry Spencer's partners."

"Interesting," Lassiter said through gritted teeth. "Now can you _stop that rattling_!" Shawn stopped the rattle, feeling the impending wrath of Lassiter burning across the table. He began to hum, however, keeping his eyes squeezed shut the whole time.

"My god," Jessica answered, shaking her head in shock. She glanced around at the others. "It's adding up to look like the killer is hell bent on playing some sort of game with Mr. Spencer and with the whole Santa Barbara Police Department."  
She continued to explain, "His purpose isn't about hurting the victims but shocking the audience. Sending a message or… possibly paying homage to—"

"The Cobra Killer," Shawn declared, opening his eyes with discovery. Lassiter and Jessica turned to him with bewilderment.

"Do you have any idea how crazy that is?" Lassiter declared, unimpressed.

"It makes perfect sense, though," Jessica answered. "The MO is identical."

"We don't know that!" Lassiter protested.

"There's a lot you don't know," Shawn answered with a smart aleck, smug expression. "Unfortunately, this particular thing falls into the category of police work." Lassiter gave him a daring glare as Shawn turned to Juliet calmly. "Juliet, dear. You'll find the real reason the autopsy reports are inconclusive: the poison doesn't match any other known poison they have in the lab."

"That's right," Juliet said with puzzlement. "It doesn't—"

"That's because there was no manmade poison in their food or in their bodies," Shawn explained casually as he leaned back in the chair. "It's snake venom."

"If that's true, then somebody really is copying the Cobra," Jessica responded with astonishment.

"Wait a second," Juliet declared, awash with confusion. "Who is the Cobra Killer?"

Lassiter hesitantly explained, "Twenty years ago, a Santa Barbara man named Kane Hodder poisoned several people in October by putting snake venom in candy. A kid died because of the poison the week of Halloween and Hodder kidnapped several other children in that final week."

"Henry Spencer was the lead detective on the case," Jessica explained. "He was the man responsible for capturing Hodder on the morning of October 31st and rescuing the six children he abducted. Hodder's now serving three consecutive life terms in federal prison."

Gus turned to Shawn, bewildered. "You remember this?"

With a monotone voice, he answered, "The case that made him everybody's hero. Of course."

With a defeated sigh, Lassiter placed his hand on his head. "I can't believe I didn't remember it."

"Maybe that's what the killer wants," Jessica declared. "He wants us to remember the Cobra."

Lassiter looked up at Juliet. "Get me Burbank PD on the phone, plus any and all files on the Cobra." He came to a tired stand, "Now, one of the children he kidnapped back in '86 was a California Representative's daughter so it's a federal case. We'll need to request permission from the FBI."

The room cleared out as Juliet and Jessica disappeared. Lassiter glanced over at Shawn with as much of a thankful expression as he could muster. "We'll call you if we need you," was all that Lassiter could say. Shawn didn't expect anything more. He came to a stand, leaving the rattle on Lassiter's desk and exited the room with Gus.

As they walked away from the office, Gus glanced around, making sure they were alone, and asked in shock, "How did you know about John Carpenter?"

"I simply remembered the name of Henry's longest-running partner and looked him up online." Shawn pulled a folded up piece of computer paper out from his pocket and handed it to Gus. "_The Burbank Daily Press_." Gus unfolded the paper and stared at the article detailing Carpenter's death, identical to Romero and Cunningham's.

"All we need to do now is find a more accurate list of my dad's partners," Shawn said, as he and Gus continued to walk through the station.

"How are you going to do that?" Gus asked confusedly.

"Simple," he replied. "I'm _gonna_ get it from him."

* * *

Henry looked up as he heard his kitchen door swing open. Shawn marched through the door with determination, Gus following him with less enthusiasm. "Dad," Shawn demanded, "give me a list of your partners. I need it."

"How dare you order me around in my own house," Henry answered angrily. Henry got up from the table as the two of them began a stand-off in the center of the kitchen with Gus watching anxiously. "Get out, Shawn. I don't want to play anymore games."

"Well, if wishes were horses," Shawn declared. "Sorry, officer, but you're in one." Gus glanced back and forth between the two men uncomfortably as Shawn lingered dangerously close to the end of Henry's line. He stepped up and glared at his father. "Your partners are dying and a killer is calling you out personally. Trick or Treat, Dad."

Shawn's eyes moved over to the telephone sitting on the kitchen counter with a notepad and pen next to it. He glanced down at the words momentarily on the paper: a time, date and name of a funeral home. Shawn looked up at Henry with a betrayed expression.

"You knew Carpenter was dead," Shawn declared, astonished. "You knew and you didn't tell me."

"I want you off this case," Henry threatened.

"I don't care what you want!" Shawn shouted.

Henry shouted back, the two of them overlapping voices, "Stop being a child!"

"Shawn," Gus snapped, seriously worried. "We're not getting what we want. Now we should leave."

Henry sneered at his son, "You're better off packing up your motorcycle and running off again."

Shawn stared defensively straight into Henry's eyes. He calmly declared, "I'm _not_ running away. This is _my_ case and you'd better start cooperating with me or we're gonna have a problem."

"A _problem_?" Henry repeated as Shawn glanced over his shoulder. "_Your_ case? Son, you screwed up your life a long time ago—"

"You're right," Shawn said with a sudden change of tone, cutting him off. All of his anger had disappeared and he sounded like normal. "I apologize for coming into your house and ordering you around. We're leaving now."

He turned around, pulling Gus out of the kitchen door with him. As the door slammed with finality, Henry stood in the middle of the room with a baffled expression. His eyebrows raised as a thought occurred to him. Henry spun around and stared at the piece of paper on the kitchen table: Henry's own list of his former partners, all out in the open for Shawn to see.

In a flash, Henry rushed out of the kitchen door to see Gus' Toyota Yaris speeding out of the driveway with Shawn at the wheel.


	6. The Most Dangerous Game

**LEGAL A/N:** _Psych_ and all characters belong to Steve Franks, Tagline Pictures, NBC Universal Television Studios, GEP Productions and USA Network.

**6. The Most Dangerous Game**

"All right," Shawn said as he rushed into Gus' office at Psych. "I got them." Gus sat at his desk as Shawn placed a printed list of Henry's former partners, along with several details about them, on the table.

Gus looked down at the extensive list. "Whoa," he scoffed. "Your dad sure had a lot of partners."

"Yeah," Shawn sneered. "Apparently, he wasn't the easiest person to work with. Can you imagine?"

"Where do we start?" Gus asked, overwhelmed.

"We've only got solid addresses for two," Shawn declared. "Toby Hooper and Elliot Craven." Gus nodded as he came to a stand and Shawn snatched the list up off the table. "We'll start at Hooper's first," Shawn ordered, "it's only about fifteen minutes from here."

"Should we call Juliet first?" Gus asked.

"We don't need their help right now," Shawn sternly declared as he marched towards the doorway. With a baffled expression, Gus followed him anxiously.

"Shawn," Gus reasoned, "can we just slow down for a second and talk about this?"

"Talk about what?" Shawn said with a monotone voice. He walked out of the doorway and headed for the car parked outside as Gus scrambled for the keys.

"Talk about what you're doing right now," Gus called out to Shawn as he locked the office door as quickly as he could. "You're jumping into this way too deep. You've _never_ been so determined to solve a case before."

"Gus," Shawn sighed with frustration, "there's a _serial killer_ out there."

"So? There's one every day. This isn't the first we've handled… Remember Hiltenbock?"

"What's your point?" Shawn said as he stood at the driver's door impatiently.

"I'm just saying," Gus explained as he walked from the door towards the car. "You can't let whatever feelings you have with your—"

"Gus, we really need to go," Shawn cut him off, reaching out his hand. "Keys," he said with a short tone. Gus sighed and tossed Shawn the keys with a wary feeling in his stomach.

* * *

About ten minutes later, just as the sun was setting behind the Santa Barbara coast, Shawn and Gus arrived at the residence of Toby Hooper. The two of them stopped in the driveway then noticed a pickup truck pulling in right behind them.

"Oh, no," Shawn sighed as he glanced into the rear view mirror. Both men jumped out of the Yaris as Shawn tried to ignore the angry shouts coming from the driver parked behind him.

"Shawn!" Henry snapped. "I'm warning you! Get out of here – you have no business."

"Back off, dad!" Shawn shouted across the front yard. Both Spencer men rushed up to the front door, bickering the whole way as Gus stood back with an inundated expression. He glanced up towards the sky with heavy eyes, then shook his head and followed the two crazy detectives up to the front porch.

"Stop acting like a baby!" Henry yelled as he knocked on the door.

"You can't tell me what to do!" Shawn barked.

"I suppose you'll act like a baby on your own, right?"

"Stop acting like you're the better cop!" Shawn declared as he rapped on the door as well.

"You're not even a cop!"

"Hey, they asked me to be on the case!"

"You're a liar!"

"Am not!"

"You guys!" Gus shouted. Henry and Shawn turned to him with an angered expression. "He's not answering," Gus observed with a worried look.

Henry and Shawn's anger vanished momentarily as they glanced at each other warily. Henry reached into his denim jacket and removed a pistol from its holster and cocked it. Shawn and Gus glanced down in slight surprise as Henry held the weapon defensively and leaned into the doorframe.

"Toby!" Henry shouted. "It's Henry Spencer. Come to the door!" After several seconds of silence, Henry reached for the doorknob and found it unlocked. He twisted it and pushed the door open, revealing an empty, dark foyer with a distant noise of screaming over the screeching of strings.

Henry leading them, the men entered the foyer cautiously as Shawn followed the noise of the tinny female screams. He stepped towards the living room, glancing in and confirming his suspicions. He turned back to Gus. "It's the movie."

The three of them moved quickly back into the foyer and down another hallway leading into the kitchen. Shawn, Henry and Gus froze in the doorway and glanced down at the tiled floor, assorted trick or treat candy spilled out across the tiles. In the center of the kitchen, a pale, lifeless man was sprawled out, lying face down against the floor.

They were too late again.

* * *

Gus sat on a couch inside the police station with a sickened, disappointed expression as he gazed down at the floor with heavy eyes. Outside, the darkness of night covered and strangled the police station. Another night had come. Another day had passed and they were no closer to solving the case.

Gus glanced up to see Jessica King step up to him carrying a cup of coffee. "I didn't know how you liked it," she sheepishly declared, holding the cup out to him.

"That's fine," he smiled with a grateful nod. He took a sip as Jessica sat down next to him.

"You're not really used to this kind of work, are you?" she noted sympathetically.

"Not in the slightest," Gus explained tiredly. "I'm not so sure I'm really cut out for it."

"Then why do it?"

Gus lifted his eyes off of the cup and glanced across the police station to his best friend who looked even more destroyed than Gus. Shawn sat in the bottom of a chair in front of Juliet's desk as he emotionlessly recounted his false account of having a psychic premonition that led him to Hooper's body. Nevertheless, he was unable to explain why, even with the psychic vision, he was still too late and still no closer to the killer.

"Every superhero needs a sidekick," Gus shrugged humbly.

"Superhero?" Jessica repeated with a smile.

With a frown, Gus explained, "Apparently, we're not very good ones." All the humor in his voice completely vanished as he added with a melancholy tone. "He had a wife, you know. Hooper had a family."

Jessica nodded with understanding. "One crime, many victims."

* * *

Shawn sat back in the chair with a tired expression on his face. Juliet looked up and couldn't help but feel sympathy for what was impossible to notice. "Shawn, I think we have everything we need here," Juliet declared. "You need to go home and get some rest."

"Rest," he said with a small scoff. "Sure."

"I'm serious," Juliet insisted. "You don't need to burn yourself out. Maybe your abilities aren't at top level because of your lack of energy. Did you ever think of that?"

Shawn glanced up at her with emotionless eyes which masked a small feeling of self-loathing. "Right," he nodded in agreement. "That must be it."

Juliet sighed, knowing that she was not getting to him at the moment. She leaned back in her chair as both of their attentions were pulled towards the raised voices in the chief's office. Lassiter stood with a man and a woman dressed in business suits, all of them standing having a heated discussion of some sort.

"Wait a second," Shawn observed, his humor at half-power, "I thought I was Lassiter's flogging boy. Since when does _he_ start sharing the love?"

"Yep," Juliet sighed. "It looks like Lassiter has another reason to be mad." Lassiter yanked the door open and marched out into the main station with the straight-laced man and woman following.

"Detective O'Hara," he ordered, "I'd like you to hand all the information on the Cobra case over to Agents Marion Crane and Bret Ellis."

"Agents?" Shawn repeated.

"With the F.B.I.," Lassiter said through gritted teeth. "It seems that Kane Hodder escaped from prison a couple of weeks ago."

"What?" Juliet exclaimed.

"That would've been information vital to our case, sure," Lassiter declared as politely and spitefully as he could, "but it seems that it's a federal matter. Out of our jurisdiction. We're all off of the case." With that final announcement, Lassiter marched to the back with the two agents following in victory. Juliet and Shawn sat across from each other with blank expressions.

"The Cobra Killer is really back," Juliet sighed in defeat. "And now there's nothing we can do to stop him." She came to a frustrated stand and picked the files up off her desk, carrying them away.

Shawn watched her disappear with unmoving eyes as he stared down at the desk with a bitter feeling. A shadow formed over the desk as he glanced up and saw his father's silhouette against the ceiling lights.

"Did you hear the good news?" Shawn asked.

"Every word," Henry declared. The two of them were more or less alone in the conversation, everyone else being gone or preoccupied with other things. "This is the last time I'm gonna warn you, son," Henry added. "Get off this case now."

"Sorry, dad," Shawn said stubbornly as he calmly came to a stand. "The F.B.I. might not want any help from our beloved SBPD, but even they need psychics."

Across the room, Gus watched the scene with a worried expression with Jessica at his side, not being able to hear what was being said. "Your friend looks kind of upset," Jessica observed.

"Oh, uh," Gus tried to explain, "he's just… um, disappointed because he won't be able to throw his annual Halloween party."

"_Really_?" Jessica stated, staring at Shawn and Henry with a bewildered expression.

"_Don't_ test me," Henry said, a sudden, sharp coldness forming in his voice. "Do the math, Shawn. There's a very angry man in the back who happens to be the current interim chief of this department and he's looking for something to cheer him up. Arresting a pain in his ass would be just the cure." Shawn stared at his father with brief confusion, but suddenly understood the depth of his warning. "You and I both know the truth about you and your little charade, Shawn, and I _will_ tell your buddy Lassiter _everything_."

Jessica asked, watching from afar, "Are you _sure_ they're arguing about a party?"

"Probably," Gus shrugged.

"Well, you can tell him that you're both welcome to come to my friend's Halloween party," Jessica offered. "Have you ever heard of the Montecito Mash?"

Gus' eyes lit up as he glanced over at Jessica. "You're kidding…"

"No, my friend Cristina Kubrick is throwing it," she explained. "You two are welcome to come if you have costumes."

Gus tried to contain the burst of excitement. "We'll be there," he blurted with a giant beam on his face. "You think Oprah will be there again?"

Back across the room, Shawn stared at Henry darkly as his father declared, "Back off or I'll tell him the truth."

Shawn stepped back, clenching his jaw with burning rage. He dared not make a scene or lash out or draw attention to the fact that he had been cornered. His father had outsmarted him once again.

Shawn glanced around, trying to control his anger, and leaned in calmly. "I just want to tell you one thing," he whispered to Henry. Their eyes met and Henry could not doubt the seriousness in Shawn's voice. "I _hate_ you," Shawn declared.

Henry was still and silent, staring back at Shawn. His son backed away from him with a cold glare and turned away, marching out of the station. He dared not look at Shawn as he disappeared from view.

Gus watched Shawn storm away and knew everything had hit the fan again. "Uh, um…" Gus stuttered to Jessica. "Let-let me get back to you on a time and place. You've got my number. I…I… Later…" Gus jumped up out of his seat and ran after Shawn.


	7. The Night of the Hunter

**LEGAL A/N:** _Psych_ and all characters belong to Steve Franks, Tagline Pictures, NBC Universal Television Studios, GEP Productions and USA Network.

**7. The Night of the Hunter**

Gus wondered out of the bedroom of his apartment, his eyes in a fog. Exhaustedly, he glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand with confusion. It was a little after 4:30 in the morning and somehow the television set in the living room was left on.

He stumbled down the dark hallway until he came halfway and was hit with a sudden worry. He heard female screams from the television set. A chill went up his spine as his eyes went wide. Slowly, he stepped silently down the hall towards the living room and peered around the corner.

With a frustrated sigh of relief, he rolled his eyes as he saw Shawn sitting on the couch, staring at the TV in a zombie state. "Shawn!" Gus scoffed angrily. "What are you doing?"

"Watching _Pet Semetary_ and some crappy movie about a plane crash and Death killing a bunch of kids," he answered, monotone.

"I went to bed at one. How long have you been there?"

Shawn shrugged carelessly.

Gus shook his head with a sigh, letting his eyes fall to the floor. He had to have been awake most of the night. "You need to get a little sleep," Gus then declared, in hopes to cheer him up. "Jessica invited us to the Montecito party I was talking about. We might get to meet Oprah."

Gus looked to his friend for some sort of hopeful answer, but all he received was this deadened glaze in his eyes as the light of the TV washed over his face. There was a deep sadness inside his eyes, the kind he _never_ showed to _anyone_.

With a silent sigh, Shawn's only reply was an idle, lonely sentence. "There's nothing I'll ever be able to do…" The sentence drifted off into the disheartened wasteland from where it was born, leaving lifeless silence behind.

Gus stared at him quietly watching Shawn gaze brokenheartedly at the television set. "Shawn," Gus declared, "get off your ass."

Shawn glanced up at Gus with confusion. "Huh?"

"Do you realize how much trouble I could get into if anybody ever found out you were lying this whole time about being a psychic?" Gus asked without any pity in his voice. "It would ruin my whole life!"

Shawn sighed, rolling his eyes. "This is _just_ what I needed to hear. Me ruining more lives."

"Yes, this _is_ what you need to hear, Shawn," Gus declared. "So shut up and listen." Taken aback, Shawn looked up at him, stunned. He was quiet, though, and gave Gus the benefit of the doubt. "You know why I play along with this game even though I know the consequences? It's not for the money. It's not for the excitement. And it's _not_ to impress my dad."

"Dude, what are you saying—?"

"Four people are _dead_," Gus declared with all the energy of a preacher on Sunday. "More could follow – _including_ your dad." Shawn looked up at him with understanding, listening to every word. "Now you need to start thinking like a detective. Henry Spencer is not your dad right now, he's a potential victim. People are dying, there's a killer on the loose, we need to get to work!" Gus added quietly with a shrug, "As long as we finish before the party."

* * *

The sky over Santa Barbara began to turn a pinkish shade as Gus' blue Toyota Yaris drove down the highway. Gus was at the wheel with a Starbucks cup in the holder while Shawn was in the passenger seat with his face in a folder of newspaper articles and notebook paper from 1986.

"Okay, so here's the story so far," Shawn declared, explaining from his knowledge obtained from the past and from the newspaper. "Twenty years ago, Kane Hodder – the Cobra Killer – poisoned fourteen Summerland children and teenagers and three adults from October 2nd to October 30th. Hodder worked as a snake wrangler and put together his own lethal mixture of venom from the Indian Cobra. He goes to a store, buys a bunch of candy, injects it with venom at home and slips it back on the shelf without being noticed. A teenage girl, a middle-aged man, and a seven-year-old boy died as a result of it."

"And where did your dad fit in?"

"My dad was working with a rookie cop named Elliot Craven at the time. They'd only been together for a week before the Cobra popped up. Surprise, surprise: they didn't get along. But together, they discovered another plot the Cobra was working on involving kidnapping children on Halloween and taking them to the basement of the Granada Theater."

"Granada Theater?" Gus repeated. "What for?"

"I don't know," Shawn shrugged in annoyance. "To go all Freddy Krueger on them, I guess. Why else would you take people to the basement?"

"That was a boiler room."

"No," Shawn argued, "I specifically remember it being a basement."

"I don't agree with you," Gus shook his head.

"How do you know?" Shawn asked. "Mr. I-Don't-Know-The-Difference-Between-Freddy-and-Jason. You don't even like scary movies."

"Finish the story, Shawn," Gus snapped.

"Fine," he declared. "Anyway, back to Henry and Elliot. Elliot was replaced by Sean Cunningham on October 30th."

"A day before Henry's big bust," Gus declared.

"Exactly," Shawn noted. "If Hodder kills Craven, that's the last in line for the poisoning. Which leaves his other unfinished great plan: kidnapping the kids. If the Cobra's back, whatever he's planning is going down on Halloween night."

Gus turned to him with wide, worried eyes. "_Tonight_."

* * *

Shawn and Gus strolled down a wooden dock on the Santa Barbara pier a few minutes after the sunrise. They followed Elliot Craven, a tall, well-built man with thinning dark hair in casual clothing carrying a length of rope to a yacht at the end of the dock.

"Is that his?" Gus whispered.

"It would appear so," Shawn shrugged.

"I guess leaving the police force hasn't let him down financially," Gus noted as he examined the expensive-looking day sailing yacht.

"You sail a lot, Mr. Craven?" Shawn asked.

"Please," Elliot glanced back. "Call me Elliot. And I try to sail when I can. It's better in Fort Lauderdale, though." The three of them came to the end of the dock and Elliot turned towards Shawn and Gus. "It's very nice of you to ask, but I know why you're here. I already got the warning from Chief Lassiter about Hodder's escape." Elliot glanced down at the ground, shaking his head in puzzlement. "I gotta tell you, I'm a little surprised that I would be a target. I was only Henry's partner about a month."

"True," Gus shrugged. "But you two covered the Cobra from beginning to end. You did most of the work."

With a humble smile, Elliot turned away towards the water, then glanced back at Shawn and Gus. "That's very nice of you to say, but I was only a rookie. I probably was in the way more than I led the way." He looked at Shawn with a small amount of gratefulness. "Leading was always your father's job."

Elliot stepped over and tossed the rope down on the wooden dock with a relaxed tone. "I'm happy the way things worked out," he said, matter-of-factly. "I know that police work just wasn't my calling. And I feel more… free because of it. Besides, I make more in Mergers and Acquisitions."

"Ooh," Gus answered with a pointed amount of personal interest. "Now _that's_ a job I'd like. Where does it take you?"

"All over the country," Elliot declared with a proud tone. "New York, Boston, L.A. I made a major deal in Phoenix two weeks ago, in fact."

"Congratulations on that," Shawn nodded. He glanced over at Gus, then turned back to Elliot. "Look, it's probably best that you not be alone tonight and—"

"Don't eat anything?" Elliot added. He scoffed, "_Trust_ me. I won't."

Shawn and Gus turned to each other once more. "Well," said Shawn. "We'll leave you to your… yacht." Both of them turned around to the other end of the pier.

Elliot called after them, intrigued. "Hey, I didn't know that Henry Spencer's kid was psychic," he declared. "I don't really remember him saying anything about that when we were partners."

"Yeah," Shawn explained, "well… he's, uh… never really one to bring his home life to work."

"You got that right," Elliot laughed as he reminisced. "Good cop, Henry was. How is he, by the way? Haven't heard from him in years."

Shawn turned back to Elliot in contemplation. "You mean, at all? Not even recently?"

"Nope," Elliot replied.

Shawn looked at Gus with a sudden expression of alarm. "Dad hasn't been to see him," he calmly declared. Shawn quickly paced back towards the car.

Gus turned to Elliot, struggling to explain the sudden departure. "Uh, thanks for your time. We've… got to go."

* * *

Gus' car skidded to a stop in front of Henry's home. The truck was vacant from the driveway and Shawn's feet touched the ground before the car stopped completely. He bolted across the front lawn towards the door. Behind him, he could see a police cruiser parking behind Gus.

"Shawn," Gus called out. "Wait up!"

Shawn rushed to the door and pushed it open. He immediately bolted to the kitchen, afraid of what he might find. He found it empty instead. "Dad?" Shawn shouted, his voice echoing through his childhood home. The entire house was vacated.

Shawn stood in the foyer and glanced over to see Juliet, Jessica, Gus and Lassiter appear in the doorway. "Is he not here?" Gus asked.

"Damn it, we missed him," Juliet sighed.

"What are you talking about?" Shawn asked, unsuccessfully trying to mask his worry the best he could.

"Henry called the station about twenty minutes ago," Jessica explained, nearly out of breath. "He sounded crazy. He went on about 'getting on offense' and 'being the hunter.'"

Shawn's eyes fell to the floor as he shook his head at his father's predictability. "He has this theory," he explained with a frustrated scoff, "about how protecting the vulnerable shows weakness. The proper way to win the fight is to hunt the killer instead."

"We need to defend ourselves first," Jessica shook her head. She turned to Juliet and Lassiter. "Hodder will seek out his victims in solitude so we must stay together in populated areas."

"Like that party tonight," Gus offered.

Shawn turned to Gus. "Is that all you can think about, honestly?"

"I'm just saying," Gus replied apologetically.

"Wait a second," Shawn declared. Gus noted the look in his eye, the kind he had when he made his acute observations. "I'm getting something," Shawn explained. He closed his eyes and remembered walking out of the arcade twenty years before. The flier on the street. "There was a big party on Halloween night twenty years ago in the Granada Theater. The Santa Barbara Monster Mash."

"So?" Lassiter spat.

"That's where Hodder was going to take those children!" Gus explained.

"To Granada Theater? It's closed for renovation," Juliet explained.

"It's not the place that's important," Shawn answered. "It's the impression that's left. It was the biggest party in town. Just like the Montecito Mash twenty years later." Shawn turned to Juliet and Lassiter. "What if Hodder is reenacting his final plan – kidnapping children and taking them to the Montecito Mash?"

"That means Hodder will _have_ to be at that party tonight," Juliet followed.

"We've got to be there," Shawn declared with finality.

"No," Lassiter objected. "Uh-uh. Spencer, I do _not_ want _you_ there."

"Too bad," Shawn grinned, pointing at himself and Gus. "We've got invitations. What do you got, Lassy?"

"We don't _need_ invitations," Lassiter sneered.

"Um, actually," Juliet whispered to him. "Sir, it's private property. We don't have the authority." Lassiter turned to her with frustration, then looked back to grinning, victorious Shawn and Gus. With a sigh, he silently admitted his weakness.

"Don't worry," Shawn said, placing a hand on Lassiter's shoulder. "You can be _my_ date."


	8. Prom Night

**LEGAL A/N:** _Psych_ and all characters belong to Steve Franks, Tagline Pictures, NBC Universal Television Studios, GEP Productions and USA Network.

**8. Prom Night**

On the night of Halloween, Hollywood producer Cristina Kubrick's Montecito mansion was a total madhouse. Hundreds of guests, most of them celebrities wearing all sorts of costumes, lined into the gigantic ballroom where Rob Zombie's "Halloween (She Get So Mean)" currently filled the entire mansion: "_Freak on her like a maniac, yeah / Go, baby, go / A psychopath and a poor white trash is all she'll ever know / Yeah, Halloween, Halloween / That's when she get so mean… / Halloween, Halloween / Come on, baby, scream…_"

Servers were dressed in tuxedos and the mansion itself had been transformed into the Gold Room of the Overlook Hotel from Stephen King's novel The Shining. The only people not in costume were the security guards standing steadfast at the doors, checking the identification of every patron.

Shawn and Gus stood together at the edge of the ballroom, gazing around in star-studded bewilderment. Shawn was dressed head-to-toe in black as Batman, complete with black chest of armor, utility belt and a long, black cape. However, he refused to be acknowledged as Batman, instead opting for the title of 'The Dark Knight.' Gus was dressed in green scrubs with a stethoscope (a real one which he sold on his medical supply run) and a surgical cap over his head. According to Gus, women find doctors very attractive.

"This place is amazing!" Gus excitedly declared.

"Yeah," Shawn agreed calmly. "Except for the threat of death this party is pretty kick ass."

Gus glanced over towards the corner and his eyes lit up. "Ooh, is that Jennifer Aniston?" Both men turned quickly to the direction of the blonde in the corner, eager to meet her.

Shawn's face fell flat. "Oh… no, it's not. That's Tara Reid." Both of them, disappointed, kept their positions at the wall.

"Hello, gentlemen," Jessica declared from the side as she approached wearing an elegant, hunter green, velvet dress from the Renaissance period which reached the floor. Her blonde hair was now a warm brown which was lifted up onto the top of her head behind a queen's crown, a colorful mixture of crystals and curls. Stars fell from Gus' eyes as he viewed her and a giant, dopey smile formed on his face.

"Hi," he blurted.

"Enjoying the party?" she asked.

"I am now," Gus replied, a bit smoother.

Shawn glanced over to see Juliet approaching wearing a rather sexy black and white pirate's costume with high leather boots and her hair tied back in an adorable ponytail with a red striped scarf on her head. He couldn't help but forget why he was there to begin with. Juliet shyly approached and came face to face with Shawn.

"What are you looking at?" she declared.

Shawn snapped out of his daze. "Uh, nice… boots."

Shawn and Juliet glanced over to see the best sight of the entire party. Lassiter angrily tromped towards them. It was only a few moments before Gus and Jessica noticed too, Jessica gasping, then holding her tongue and looking away.

Juliet turned to Shawn. "You'd probably better not say anything. It was the last costume in his size at the store."

Lassiter, dressed in a giant foam Twinkie costume, stepped up to Shawn with a livid, red face. "_Don't_ speak," Lassiter growled as he stared down at the grinning young man.

Shawn swallowed his laughter as Jessica tried to change the subject. "Uh… let me explain who some of the hosts are." Jessica stepped up and pointing to one of her other friends, a young blonde woman dressed as Marilyn Monroe talking to that guy from _One Tree Hill_ near the fondue fountain.

"That's Jen Myers," Jessica explained. "The daughter of California Senator Myers? She'll be starring in the _Dawson's Creek_ film adaptation next spring."

Jessica then pointed off in another direction towards a dark haired young woman running around from place to place nervously wearing a devil costume. "That's Cristina Kubrick," she explained.

They could hear Cristina ordering one of the butlers. "No, no, not there," she declared. "That's where the Ferrari cake is going!"

"She's currently working with Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn on _Lord of the Rings 4_," Jessica explained as politely as she could.

"LOTR 4?" Gus declared in shock. "_How_?"

"Dunno," Jessica shook her head. "But Sean Astin's in."

Cristina turned around and caught a horrifying sight from across the ballroom. "Oh, no, no!" she barked as she ran off. "Pants back _on_, Swayze!"

"I guess you'll have to meet her later," Jessica blushed as she turned back to the guests.

"Meanwhile, our suspicions aren't wrong," Juliet noted. The detectives turned and glanced across the room to see Agents Crane and Ellis scanning the crowd. "The F.B.I.'s here too."

"Well, then let's get to work," Lassiter ordered. "Everyone spread out."

Jessica agreed, "I'll make sure the security team is on guard in the kitchen."

"I'll search the bathrooms," Gus declared.

"And I'm going to talk to Sarah Michelle Gellar," Shawn announced and strolled off.

* * *

Forty-five minutes passed and there was still no sign of Hodder. The voices of System of a Down were filling the ballroom as the song "Chop Suey!" played over the deluxe sound system. "_I don't think you trust in my self-righteous suicide / I cry… when angels deserve to die…_"

An explosive guitar solo followed as Shawn walked through the crowd and passed the only person not wearing a costume. Henry turned around and exclaimed angrily, "Shawn! What are you doing here?"

"I was invited," Shawn answered smartly. "What's your excuse?"

"Leave," Henry sternly ordered. "This is no place to—"

"Let's get something straight," Shawn defended himself. "I'm not here to impress you! I'm here to stop a killer."

"Go home, Shawn," Henry hissed. "After all Halloween is the one night you have an excuse to act like a child. You wouldn't want to miss it."

The two of them shouted over the lead singer's voice: "_Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit / Father, into your hands… Why have you forsaken me/ In your eyes/ Forsaken me / In your thoughts/ Forsaken me / In your heart/ Forsaken… me…_"

"Miss it?" Shawn repeated. "That's funny. Because what I remember about Halloween is you not letting me have one when I _was_ a child because you hated me that much." Henry stared at him with a blank expression as Shawn finished, "That's one thing that'll never change. And it doesn't have to."

Silence fell between them as Henry gazed at him in puzzlement. "Is _that_ what you think?" Henry asked, amazed.

Lassiter's booming voice broke through their conversation like a sledgehammer. "Cannonball!" he shouted in a half-slurred voice. Shawn and Henry glanced over to see the Interim Chief of the Santa Barbara Police Department standing on top of the bar in his Twinkie costume with an ecstatic expression on his face. "Clear the way! Official police business!" he shouted in a daze.

"What the hell is wrong with him?" Henry asked as he and Shawn stared with a mixture of awe and fear.

"I _love_ this song!" Lassiter screamed as the crowd of equally-inebriated celebrities below him cheered him on. Lassiter leapt off the bar and soared across the crowd, landing in the pit as they lifted him up and carried him across the top of the ocean of partygoers.

"Didn't know we were in for an edition of _Detectives Gone Wild_," Shawn noted with a confused, apprehensive expression. "God help us if he tries to flash."

Henry and Shawn glanced around and noticed that the entire crowd was pushing into them. Each of their faces carried a trace-like, hyperactive gaze. Through the horde, Shawn caught a glance of Gus pulling Jessica difficultly through the people towards them, moving slowly through the swarm.

"Shawn!" Gus called out as he was constantly elbowed in the side. "Shawn!" Finally, the two groups converged as Gus shouted over the blaring music. "What the hell is going on? What happened to everybody?"

Henry reached out and grabbed a champagne glass from one of the dancing partiers nearby, the drinker being too inebriated to notice. He also grabbed a hold of the partier and noted the excess sweat and chattering teeth. "The drinks are spiked," Henry declared.

"What?" Jessica said with wide-eyes. She glanced around, "Oh my god, these people need to get to a hospital!"

"I don't think it's poison," Henry stated. "They've been drugged. Hodder's here."

A female scream broke out over the blaring guitars and climbing piano. Gus, Shawn, Henry and Jessica began to look from side to side. The terrified screams seemed to be coming from everywhere as they grew more frantic. Henry glanced straight across the pulsing, bustling crowd to see Jen Myers struggling with an unseen attacker.

"Help! Help me!" she screamed, but her cries were drowned out by the roaring rock music. The young blonde actress was being dragged away and no one around her was sober enough to notice.

"There!" Henry called out and was off in a snap. He vanished into a wave of people as Shawn, Gus and Jessica ran after him.

"Dad!" Shawn shouted as he bounded off after his father. He could only move a few feet before he was shoved aside by dancing patrons. Shawn continued to push against the force of the gargantuan crowd, but someone pulled him back by his cape and he toppled to the floor.

"Shawn!" he could hear from above. Gus appeared over him, extending a hand down to him. Shawn was pulled off of the floor by Gus and Jessica as the three of them came to a stand. They glanced around for any sign of Henry or Jen, but both of them were missing now.

"Dad! Dad!" Shawn called out to his father, but his shouts were carried away by the music. The three of them stood alone in the sea of insanity as their control over the situation slowly began to slip away.

* * *

The steady thumping of a base beat beneath the voice of Marilyn Manson in the song "I Put a Spell on You" filled the room as Shawn fought his way through the entranced, dancing crowd. "_I put a spell on you / Lord, lord, lord / 'Cause you're mine / I can't stand the things that you do when you're fooling 'round…_"

Through the flashing of the strobe light and special effects fog, Shawn spotted Juliet fighting her way towards him. "Juliet!" he called as he struggled to make it to her. He was relieved to see that Juliet was as sober as he was.

"Juliet!" Shawn declared as he reached her. "Thank god you're not hopped up!"

"Same to you," Juliet responded with a voice of worry. "Did you see Lassiter?"

"I think he's still surfing the crowd in the back," he answered.

"My god, this is horrible."

"What about the F.B.I. agents?" Shawn asked.

"Smashed," Juliet declared. "They were moshing during 'Dragula.'"

"We've got to call for backup," Shawn declared. "Hodder is here. I think he's somehow got Jen Myers and my dad."

"That's impossible," Juliet responded.

"No," Shawn explained, "they were there one second and gone the next—"

"You don't understand," Juliet explained. "I just got off the phone with McNabb. Hodder was apprehended an hour ago in Las Vegas. He's been there for a week."

"_Vegas_?" Shawn repeated, stunned. It finally dawned on Shawn as he kicked himself for being so foolish. "We screwed up," Shawn understood, gritting his teeth with dissatisfaction. "It's been a copycat the whole time."

Suddenly, a hand yanked Shawn's arm and he turned to see Gus with a terrified expression. "Shawn! Jessica's gone!" Gus nervously declared.

"What?" Juliet replied. "What happened?"

"We were coming towards you," he explained, stuttering. "And… I-I turned around and… she was gone! What if Hodder took her?"

"It's not Hodder," Shawn explained.

"Huh?"

"That's it," Juliet declared, shouting over the music. "We're shutting this party down!"

* * *

Cristina Kubrick stood with a maintenance man at the entrance to the building, a mechanical rotating door that was currently making strange whirring noises. The electrician kneeled down on his knees with a toolbox as he tried to assess the problem. Shawn, Juliet and Gus approached them, Juliet trying to turn her cell phone back on unsuccessfully.

"Top of the line my ass!" Cristina spat as she kicked the door in her shiny, red, high-heeled boots.

"We've got to stop the party!" Gus shouted.

Cristina turned around towards them with a baffled expression. "What?" she shouted over the blaring screams of the music. "Who the hell are you?"

"Santa Barbara PD," Juliet shouted an explanation. "There's a serial killer attacking the guests. We believe three people have already been taken. I'm ordering you to shut this down!"

"Nice try," Cristina answered, "but it's not like I could if I wanted to. Some ass spiked the drinks and food! Even my security team is wasted! I've got no control."

Juliet stared down at her cell phone with frustration. "There's no signal in here anymore. I've got to get outside." Shawn and Gus glanced down at their cell phones to find that neither of them had enough signal to make a call either.

"Can't do that either," Cristina explained. "I had this revolving door installed for the party and it's stuck. We can't get out."

"You had a door installed just for this party?" Shawn said in disbelief.

"Diddy did it," the movie producer shrugged in reply.

"Can't we break the glass?" Gus suggested.

"Bulletproof," Cristina shook her head. "Something else I learned from Diddy."

Shawn glanced over at Gus. "Now what are the odds that there would coincidentally be a killer in a giant mansion to which there is no escape?"

"There has to be another exit somewhere," Juliet declared. "I'm gonna look while I keep trying my phone. We need to get through to the department for backup."

Juliet rushed off as Shawn and Gus turned back to Cristina and the maintenance man. "You two keep working on this door," Gus ordered.

"Well what else are we going to do?" Cristina rolled her eyes. "My party's been ruined. And nobody even had Ferrari cake!"

Shawn glanced over to see the giant yellow Twinkie several yards away hopping up and down to the screeching guitar. "It's a mosh, bitches! Get in and _push_!" Lassiter howled.

Shawn grabbed Gus by the shoulder and pulled him back through the crowd. When they finally reached the mosh pit, they yanked him out and pulled him to the sidelines.

"Detective!" Gus shouted, trying to get his attention.

"Lassy, talk to me!" Shawn ordered.

"Spencer?" Lassiter called out in a daze.

"It's me! I'm right here!"

With a glazed-over expression, Lassiter glanced down at his costume, "This suit feels so… squishy…" He began to rub the foam of his Twinkie suit in a trance.

"Shawn, this is no use," Gus declared.

"Hold on, we've got to try to communicate," Shawn said.

"I don't think I can stand next to this man as he strokes his Twinkie," Gus firmly stated, then paused in his speech and thought. Shawn glanced up at Gus with bewildered silence. They both turned back to Lassiter, letting it go.

"Lassy, did you bring your police radio with you?" Shawn asked.

"Ye… yeah," he answered in a slur.

"Good, where is it?" Shawn asked excitedly.

"I… I had it…" Lassiter said as he began to slowly glance around his poofy costume. He patted the foam down, but wasn't finding anything. "Somebody borrowed it and didn't give it back."

"What? Who?" Shawn exclaimed.

Lassiter thought hard for a few seconds, then replied, "Freddy Krueger." Shawn and Gus glanced at each other with a frustrated sigh which was interrupted by yet another terrified scream. Another worried look followed as the detectives rushed over towards the direction of the shout, back towards the revolving door.

They arrived at the doorway and there was no sign of Cristina or the electrician. Shawn stared down to find the tools all still spread out in the exact position that they were in before he left. However, he quickly noticed a line of dark red leading away from the door. A blood trail smeared across the floor into a dark corner where the DJ booth was located.

Gus gave Shawn a worried look as they stared down at the blood trail. Hesitantly, they began to follow away from the roaring crowd. They entered the dark corridor and were now alone and secluded in the dimly lit area. Carefully they followed the trail as Shawn's eyes found a still figure at the end of the hallway, stretched out across the floor.

"Oh, no," he breathed as he gazed at the body. It was the stabbed electrician with four gash marks in the chest of his blue jumpsuit. Four marks, he noted. "Freddy Krueger," Shawn said with a newfound fear. Shawn and Gus glanced over and spotted a red striped cloth on the ground. Shawn himself had just enough time to recognize it as Juliet's. "Gus," he nervously said. "I think we're walking into a trap."

A half-second later, the floor gave way beneath them as they were tumbling into darkness.


	9. Halloween H20

**LEGAL A/N:** _Psych_ and all characters belong to Steve Franks, Tagline Pictures, NBC Universal Television Studios, GEP Productions and USA Network.

**9. Halloween: 20 Years Later**

Shawn slowly opened his eyes, his skull throbbing incessantly. Surrounded by darkness and cold air, his senses were all thrown off, but it wasn't long before he turned on his observation skills. He noted the smell of must and mold and the chilly, dust-covered cement. He listened to the echoing hum of a distant air conditioning system and the low, thumping of the music – My Chemical Romance's "The Black Parade." Even without his sharp eyes he could tell he was in the basement.

He tried to move his body but felt the grinding sting of rope tightly binding his wrists behind him. He struggled beneath the long black cape of his costume, but it was no use. _Tied up in a basement_, Shawn thought to himself. _I hate Halloween_.

He heard a pop and burn from overhead. Light emerged from the ceiling as Shawn groggily gazed up at the single, naked bulb hanging down. Instantly he began to make out shapes around him. Just a few feet away, Gus was stretched out and unconscious, his hands tied behind his back the same way and his scrubs covered in dust.

"Gus," he faintly whispered. "Gus! Wake up!" A grimace came across Burton Guster's face, hearing the sound of his name, and his dark eyes eased open. Gus glanced up at the ceiling, then glanced over at Shawn with a confused look.

"Are we in Mexico?" Gus asked worriedly.

"Shawn?" they heard another whisper from the side. Shawn and Gus glanced over to see Juliet on her stomach in her pirate costume, her hands apparently tied behind her back as well. Beside her, Cristina Kubrick was laid out on the ground on her back, gazing around at the basement in confusion. Passed her, Shawn saw Jen Myers and Henry tied up the same way, both of them conscious and just as worried as everyone else.

"What's going on?" Jen asked with a terrified voice.

Shawn glanced up and stared back around at the ceiling. There was no trap door above them. They were moved to a completely new location of the house – away from anyone that could hear or help them. This brought a new thought into Shawn's head.

"Cristina," Shawn incredulously declared in frustration, "who in the _hell_ puts trap damn doors in their house?"

Cristina looked over at him with apologetic eyes. "Diddy did—"

"Don't say it," Gus cut her off, equally annoyed.

Jen said with a terrified, bewildered voice, "What's going on here? What's happening?"

"Just stay calm, miss," Henry ordered. "Everything will be fine—"

With a snap, another two other florescent lights came on and the captives could see the basement even more clearly. An array of long, sharp weapons hung down from the ceiling, including knives, fire axes, garden shears, fire pokers, needle-like daggers, even a sickle.

"Are those your decorations, too?" Juliet scoffed as she stared at the dangerous, overhanging weapons.

Cristina stared up at the arsenal overhead with fearful eyes. "No," she calmly replied, swallowing hard. Shawn and Gus glanced at each other dreadfully, then glanced around as they heard the sounds of approaching footsteps.

A deep, raspy voice declared from the darkness of a doorway at the top of a wooden staircase, "Hello, Detectives. Do you want to play a game?"

"I've had enough games," Henry snapped. "This is about you and me, Hodder. Let these people go."

"It's not just about you and I, Detective Spencer," the voice answered. In the darkness, they could make out a silhouette of a tall man wearing a fedora hat. "It's not about Kane Hodder either."

"What?" Henry whispered in confusion.

"Let me tell you a bedtime story, Detective," the voice continued. One by one, they could hear the creaky footsteps of the silhouette as it moved down the wooden steps. Shawn viewed the enlarged right hand of the silhouette and could barely see the green and red stripes of the sweater worn by the killer. "One Halloween a long time ago, six naughty children lost their way and were taken by the Cobra," the Shadow declared. "The Cobra had very special plans for these kids, but it was an arrogant police officer that stopped him from finishing them. But what this mean detective didn't understand is that the Cobra wasn't just a killer – he was a legend. He thought he could destroy the legend. Legends never die."

The Shadow moved down to the bottom of the steps and stopped. They could hear in his voice the smile which stretched his face. "Now the legend has returned. This time, he's chosen six more children, including the arrogant detective. This time… nothing will stop him."

The six hostages were stunned into silence. "Right…" Shawn said sarcastically, breaking the tension. "Thanks a bushel for that," he said emotionlessly. "I hate to ruin the ending, but I'm afraid I've already got it figured out… Elliot."

They turned towards the shadowed figure as he stepped closer into the light, reaching up and removing the rubber, burned-face mask and removing it, confirming Shawn's accusation.

"Elliot Craven?" Henry repeated. "What the hell are you doing?"

"It's really quite simple, Dad," Shawn explained. "You see the arrogant detective had a partner who studied for years more than regular officers just so he could become the best cop possible. Unfortunately, they stuck him with the biggest prick in the force. The dim-witted partner's best just wasn't enough for the Santa Barbara PD. So he was discharged and he was driven mad when his arrogant partner got all the attention for nabbing the Cobra Killer." Shawn eyed Elliot with a smug expression. "You knew every detail of the Cobra killings, even details that weren't released to the public because you were there when they happened. And you've been planning the Cobra's comeback for years."

Elliot stared at him with a satisfied, proud smile as Shawn asked, "Tell us, Mr. Mergers and Acquisitions, what exactly was your big deal in Phoenix? Sure, you acquired Strode Technologies for your own, but you also took a trip to the federal prison where Hodder was being held. You helped him plan his escape."

"I don't get it," Juliet declared, stunned. "We were watching Craven, too. How was he able to kill so many so fast?"

"Easy," Shawn answered. "With a little help from his friends. There are six victims here for the slaughter, but seven were taken." He eyed Elliot, catching him at his own game. "So where is she, Elliot?" They heard the hammer being pulled back on a revolver as Jessica King emerged and descended down the stairs with Juliet's gun on Shawn.

"Jessica?!" Gus exclaimed in shock.

Cristina stared up at her, bewildered. "What the hell are you doing?"

"You've been working with Elliot the whole time, haven't you?" Shawn accused. "Working against us… throwing us off the path? You two wanted to recreate the entire spree, down to the last detail. That's-that's why you convinced Cristina to throw this party and helped her plan it out! You befriended and invited Jen, daughter of Senator Laurie Myers, because twenty years ago the Cobra was going to kill the daughter of a California Representative! You're both _obsessed_."

"I'm in _love_," Jessica strongly corrected as she glanced over at Elliot with passionate eyes. "You'll do anything to take care of the ones you love."

"Even kill?" Henry asked in disgust.

"Hey!" Elliot snapped at Henry. "What do _you_ think you know about being a human being?"

"You're a killer, Elliot," Henry declared.

"Don't think you can judge me," Elliot sneered. "When's the last time you cared about anybody but yourself?"

"What are you, the 'caring' serial killer?" Shawn belligerently asked.

"Quiet, Shawn," Henry ordered.

"You took _everything_ from me!" Elliot roared. "My whole life I wanted nothing but to be a cop like my father! On his _deathbed_ that's what I _promised_ him I would become." He grew more frantic as he held up the Freddy Krueger glove with razor-sharp knives on the four fingers of his right hand. "That was my _destiny_! My _future_! My father's _legacy_! You took that from me!"

There was a moment of calm right before the rupture of the dam as Elliot declared, "Now, Henry, it's only fair that I take something from you." He reached down and snatched Shawn by the hair, yanking him up on his knees.

"Elliot, don't!" Henry roared with all the terror of a father about to lose his only son wrapped in his voice. It was enough to shock both Shawn and Elliot, but only fueled the killer's fury, willing even more agony upon his former partner.

"Stop!" Gus called out.

"Shut up!" Jessica spat as she aimed the gun at both Gus and Henry.

"Let him go, Craven!" Juliet warned.

Shawn glanced down and saw the razor blade glove slowly approach his neck until he could feel the individual points of the knives on his throat. He gazed up at Elliot, feeling every muscle in his body clench with fear. For the first time in his life he stared at true hatred and felt the end of his life careening towards him.

"Did you see this coming?" Elliot cruelly asked with a smile on his face. He made the smallest incision across Shawn's neck, right beneath his jaw. "Do you already know what your death with be like? Got any idea how much it'll hurt?"

Shawn was silent with a stone face as he gazed up at Elliot, but maintained himself with all the courage he could muster as he tried to pull free of his restraints behind his back.

"What do you say we find out?" Elliot grinned. Shawn was out of time. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Juliet's leg shoot out as she kicked Jessica's feet out from under her. Juliet had slipped out of her ropes while both Jessica and Elliot were distracted and now Jessica was toppling to the floor, the gun skidding across the cement. Juliet made a rush for the free gun, but Jessica grabbed a hold of her as the two women wrestled viciously across the floor.

Gus scooted towards the gun as Cristina and Jen scrambled to their feet. "Run!" Henry ordered them as the two women rushed off towards the stairs. Henry fought with his ropes as Gus inched closer and closer towards the weapon. Elliot let Shawn go and ran towards Gus, grabbing him by the shoulder. Elliot pulled back his bladed glove and was seconds away from plunging the fingers down into Gus' back when Shawn head-butted Elliot, sending all three of them to the floor.

Henry, now free of his restraints, came to his feet and tackled Elliot back down before he could get up off of the ground again. Henry used all of his strength to push down the younger, stronger Elliot, but as soon as he was on the floor, Shawn and Gus held both of Elliot's arms down to the ground by sitting on them.

Gus sat firmly on Elliot's right hand and was able to cut through one of his ropes on the Freddy glove, freeing himself. Gus and Henry both held Elliot's right arm down as Gus grabbed a hold of the glove, removing it from the hand.

Jessica knocked her elbow into Juliet's face, sending the junior detective to the floor ferociously. Jessica glanced back at the gun on the floor and made a dive for it, but was stopped inches away. Jen angrily jumped on her back and pulled her to the ground. Jessica clawed at Jen's arms as the girls screamed viciously until Jessica saw one of the red leather boots in her view. She glanced up to see Cristina rear a wrench back as she baseball-batted the traitor across the face.

"That's for ruining my party!" Cristina barked as Jessica fell to the ground.

Elliot kneed Henry in the stomach, knocking him off as he back-punched Gus in the face. Gus and Henry both flew backwards as Elliot brutally grabbed a hold of Shawn. He wrapped a muscular arm around Shawn's throat, holding him helpless in a choke-hold.

"You can't win!" Elliot hissed in Shawn's ear he squeezed tighter. Shawn, with his hands still tied behind his back, began to feel his head lighten as he felt the mounting, devastating pressure within. The powerful force crushing his larynx did not loosen until the second he heard Juliet's voice in a dangerous tone.

"Let him go!" she declared, holding the revolver high with a strong grip. She aimed at Craven's skull as he glanced over and saw the barrel pointing towards him. He only flinched his squeezing for a moment before he continued the strangulation.

Elliot glared at her with a crazed expression. "Not until Henry loses!" It was clear that he was so infatuated with killing Shawn at that moment that he dared Juliet to pull the trigger. "Not until he loses!"

The police academy-trained rules of engagement were quickly vanishing from her mind as she saw Shawn's face turn an eerie blue. He was dangerously near blacking out. Juliet aimed and squeezed the trigger.

It was a half-instant before she squeezed the trigger all the way back before she paused. Henry Spencer appeared in a flash wielding the giant wrench. He pulled it back and cracked it across Elliot's skull. Elliot saw a flash of light at the moment of impact as his grip on Henry's son instantly loosened.

Shawn fell forward to the floor, landing on his side as he gasped and coughed for air. "Shawn!" he heard Gus' panicked voice as his best friend quickly joined him at his side. Shawn felt all the oxygen rush to his head as he stared up at Gus in a daze.

Elliot, confused and bewildered, could not feel the pain of his injury quite yet. He stumbled forward, turning around towards Henry. Standing behind him now, Juliet gazed at the wound that Henry caused to the back of Craven's skull with a disgusted grimace. As he stared at the floor, Elliot reached back in a trance-like state and touched the wetness beneath the frayed costume fedora. Elliot pulled his hand in front of his eyes, seeing it covered in hot, red liquid.

The killer's eyes drifted up numbly to Henry, who stood before him with a cold, intimidating expression. Henry slowly stepped up to Elliot. Juliet still had the gun raised, in a state of shock and confusion. She wasn't sure now which one she was about to shoot. Henry gripped the wrench tightly as he approached Craven, keeping his fierce gaze on him. Elliot watched motionlessly as the man walked towards him, coming eye-to-eye just inches away.

"Mr. Spencer…" Juliet nervously warned.

Gus glanced up from his friend and viewed the scene about to unfold with equal worry. What was he about to do? He turned back to Shawn and began to free him from the ropes, still keeping a nervous eye on the situation.

Elliot stared into Henry's eyes; it was much like watching a scary movie unfold and not knowing what horrible thing was about to come next. Inside the father's eyes, he could read the admonition posted for Elliot to see. It was the same threat that he had given the Cobra Killer twenty years before in the midst of their game of hunter and hunted, and it was delivered with the same passion that could only be garnered by a real father.

Henry leaned forward and every other body in the room froze in place. The retired police detective delivered the warning in a low enough whisper for only Elliot to hear. "_If you touch my son again, I'll kill you._"

Elliot shuddered at the quiet roar, feeling the intensity and heat of every word. It was the same sentence, the same passion, which Henry had said to the real Cobra when his son was threatened long ago. It was the real reason that Henry fought so hard to take down the serial killer, and it was a side of himself that he would never show to anyone. Especially not his own son.

But Elliot knew without a doubt it was a side important enough to make a good cop into a killer.

Elliot stepped away and slowly dropped to his knees, putting his hands behind his head. Juliet stared back and forth between Henry and Elliot with confusion, not having heard the transaction between them. "Elliot Craven…" Juliet slowly began, "…you're under arrest for the murders of George Romero, Sean Cunningham, Jonathan Carpenter, Toby Hooper…"

**Wednesday, November 1, 2006**

Red and white police lights flashed and washed against Cristina Kubrick's Montecito home as the crowd of hundreds of celebrities filed out of the building still with a buzz. They were kindly escorted by members of the Santa Barbara Police Department, who also tried to keep the reporters at bay.

Officer Buzz McNabb was on the scene at the door. He helped random people down the steps onto the sidewalk when he glanced up and saw Lassiter stumbling out of the doorway with both arms around Agents Crane and Ellis, all of them giggling like schoolchildren.

"Sir?" McNabb declared in confusion and disbelief as he stared at his inebriated superior dressed in a yellow, foam Twinkie costume.

Lassiter glanced over and laid eyes on McNabb. "Nabby!" he bellowed cheerfully. "How's it goin? Hey! You've got to meet that Swayze guy! Real nice man! Awesome dancer…"

The two F.B.I. agents exploded with laughter as the three of them stumbled off down the sidewalk. McNabb watched them go with a perplexed expression.

Juliet and another uniformed officer led a handcuffed Elliot Craven to the back of a police cruiser. He stared down at the open back of the car, then lowered himself into the seat. Juliet slammed the door, leaving alone in the back. Elliot glanced out the window to an adjacent car, viewing Jessica King who sat in the back of the separate cruiser with her eyes deadened.

Two uniformed officers appeared on either side of the car, opening the front doors and entering. Jessica glanced over at Elliot as the engine turned over. He watched a small, bittersweet smile form on her face. He read the three words on her lips that she mouthed to him, "I love you…" Seconds later, the car pulled away, carrying her from him for the last time.

Cristina and Shawn walked side-by-side, the Devil and the Dark Knight sharing a conversation. "So you got these powers when you were eighteen, right?" Cristina asked, fully intrigued.

"Yep," Shawn said with a more quiet voice than usual. "Now I'm working for the Santa Barbara PD. We take private cases, too, though."

"That's amazing!" Cristina excitedly declared. "It would make an awesome movie." Shawn glanced over at her as her face fell flat. "No," she declared, shaking her head. The excitement built back up as a new thought occurred to her. "A TV show!" She smacked her hands together victoriously, "Damn, I'm good!"

She glanced up at Shawn. "I just want to say, thanks for everything." Yet another thought popped up in her head. "So… you can see the future, right? Can you do me a favor?"

"What is it?"

"_Lord of the Rings 4_," she anxiously asked. "What do you think?"

Shawn glanced down at the ground tenderly, then looked back up at her with a shrug. "You know those Tolkien fans," he forced a nervous grin. "If you film it, they will come."

A blaring ring sounded out as Cristina reached down and retrieved her Blackberry. "Ooh," she apologized. "I've got to take this. Thank you again, Shawn." She answered the call, putting the phone to her ear with a stoked tone of voice. "Vince!" she exclaimed as she walked away. "Oh, my god! You will _not_ believe what just happened!"

Shawn stood by and watched her walk off with a slight smile. Now standing alone on the lawn of the mansion, he turned around and stared at the house behind him, the police lights flashing all around.

"How's your throat?" Gus asked, approaching him from the side.

"Won't be able to talk right for a few days," Shawn whispered. He reached up and gingerly touched the bruised ring around his neck.

"I've got something at home for that," Gus nodded helpfully.

"Will it relieve the stinging I've-Just-Swallowed-Acid feeling?" Shawn asked.

"I didn't know Batman was such a baby."

"Hey! It's the _Dark Knight_."

Gus softly laughed as he glanced around. "Well, I guess I can rack tonight up as an unlucky-in-love night."

"Right," Shawn nodded. "I thought _I_ usually fell for the bad ones."

"Yeah," Gus shrugged.

"But none of my bad ones were serial-killing accomplices," Shawn noted.

"Are you trying to rub this in?" Gus asked.

"Just a little bit."

Gus sighed, "Well it's been fun, but I've think I've had enough Halloween to last me for one… ever. I'm going home."

"All right, dude," Shawn nodded as he glanced back at the house.

Gus turned away, then paused glancing back as he gave Shawn a friendly punch in the arm. "I'm glad you're still with us, man," Gus declared seriously. Shawn glanced back at him and gave him a peaceful nod for a reply. Gus turned around and began the long walk back to his car, leaving Shawn alone again, but not for very long.

Shawn turned around and saw Henry slowly stepping up to him with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the building. It was almost as if two strangers were converging at a bus stop. Henry and Shawn stood side by side as they gazed at the flashing lights.

"How you feeling?" Henry finally said after a long bout of silence.

"Okay," Shawn answered.

Both of them gazed down at the soft blades of grass beneath their feet which must have cost thousands of dollars to grow and maintain. Shawn glanced at his end of his cape which was pretty much torn. Henry removed and replaced his baseball cap, firmly keeping it snug on his head.

From across the lawn, Shawn and Henry both set their attention on the same thing. Through the gigantic crowd lining out of the mansion, they noticed the small detail of Juliet walking towards the parked police cruiser with Elliot inside as she sat down in the passenger's side and another uniformed officer got into the driver's seat. They slammed the doors closed, turned over the engine, and slowly began their drive to the station.

Shawn and Henry carefully eyed Elliot who sat alone in the back seat, mulling over the epitome of his life. They could see in his expression that even though he was defeated, the pure hatred he had for Henry Spencer remained. It was the fear that Henry burned into Elliot which made him back down.

Shawn swallowed hard and glanced down at the ground. He heard the passion in his father's voice when he gave the warning to Elliot and would always remember every word. But that was a side of himself which he would not show anyone. Especially not his own father.

But at least now Shawn knew the truth. His father didn't really hate him. Smoke and mirrors. It was always all a trick. The real question was if he hated his father for hiding the truth.

"Wanna get something to eat?" Henry asked idly, not making eye contact with his son.

Shawn gazed out into the blank space before him and replied, "Sure."

**The End**


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